Review Summary

In "The Constant Gardener," Fernando Meirelles's excellent adaptation of John le Carré's novel, Ralph Fiennes plays Justin Quayle, a British diplomat whose main qualities seem, at least at first, to be diffidence, his interest in gardening and a fumbling, self-effacing kindness. His words half swallowed, his features perpetually tinged with guilt, Justin is temperamentally unsuited to being the hero of a globe-trotting political thriller, which is part of why "The Constant Gardener" is an unusually satisfying example of the genre. Another reason is that Mr. Meirelles's film actually bothers to say something about global politics. In pointedly applying President Bush's phrase "axis of evil" to multinational corporations rather than to rogue states, the movie shows a willingness to risk didacticism in the service of encouraging discussion. This is a supremely well-executed piece of popular entertainment that is likely to linger in your mind and may even trouble your conscience. Which is only proper, since the theme of the film, as of Mr. le Carré's novel, is the uneasy, divided conscience of the liberal West. — A. O. Scott